I have been doing some research on Dorothy Kilgallen. She was a journalist who was investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Kilgallen managed to obtain the Dallas Police Department radio logs for the day of the assassination. This revealed that as soon as the shots were fired in the Dealey Plaza, the Chief of Police, Jesse Curry, issued an order to search the Grassy Knoll. However, up until that time, Curry had insisted that as soon as he heard the sound of the shots he told his men to search the Texas School Book Depository.

In September 1964 Kilgallen reported in the New York Journal American that Jack Ruby, J. D. Tippet and Bernard Weismann had a two hour meeting at the Carousel Club on 14th November, 1963. Later, Kilgallen managed to obtain a private interview with Jack Ruby. She told friends that she had information that would "break the case wide open". Aware of what had happened to Bill Hunter and Jim Koethe (two reporters who had both been killed after making such a claim), Kilgallen handed her interview notes to her friend Margaret Smith. She told friends that she had obtained information that Ruby and Tippet were friends and that David Ferrie was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

On 8th November, 1965, Kilgallen, was found dead in her New York apartment. She was fully dressed and sitting upright in her bed. The police reported that she had died from taking a cocktail of alcohol and barbiturates. The notes of her interview with Ruby and the article she was writing on the case had disappeared. Her friend, Margaret Smith, who had been given the notes on the case, died two days later. The notes were never found.

I carried out a search on Kilgallen on the web. The first batch of pages contained information that I already knew about Kilgallen and were just recycled details that have appeared in various books about the assassination of Kennedy. However, I eventually came across an anti-Castro website. It included newspaper accounts revealing details of what Castro had been up to over the last fifty years. One account was a newspaper article written by Kilgallen for New York Journal American on 15th July, 1959. Like the other articles on the site it was highly critical of Castro. It also contained something else that surprised me a great deal. Kilgallen claimed that the CIA and the Mafia were involved in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. We now know this was true but it only became public knowledge during the Frank Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence Activities in 1975. This article was written in July, 1959. Kilgallen was obviously well-informed about what was going on in the CIA at that time.

I continued my search and I eventually came across something that was even more interesting. It was the notes of a CIA report on Marilyn Monroe. Dated 3rd August, 1962, the actual report had been withheld but the notes themselves were very revealing. The report was based on the wire-tap of certain people’s telephone calls. This included those of Kilgallen, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Kennedy and Howard Rothberg, a lawyer working for Monroe. The CIA document claims that Monroe was threatening to tell secrets that she had obtained from her relationship with John F. Kennedy. This included the claim that Monroe "knew of the President's plan to kill Castro". It appears Rothberg was passing on information from Monroe to Kilgallen. The notes of course do not say what the CIA planned to do about this. That would have been in the report that is still being withheld. What we do know is that Marilyn Monroe was found dead two days after this report was written.

This raises a new question about the death of Kilgallen (she died in similar circumstances to Monroe). Was she killed because of what she knew about the Kennedy assassination or was it more to do with what she knew about the death of Marilyn Monroe?

I will be talking about this in my presentation in Dallas later today. I will answer this in more detail when I get back to the UK.

Thank God somebody is keeping the memory of Dorothy Kilgallen alive. You have no idea how happy that makes ANYBODY who is genuinely concerned about investigating the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

One of the early victims of the JFK conspiracy of silence, better yet "silencing" in the
aftermath of JFK'S murder, was the noted reporter, columnist and television celebrity, Dorothy Kilgallen. I had watched her for years on "What's My Line?", not realizing that she had any involvement with the JFK story. Years later, I learned that she had broken the convention of silence in the press and written openly in her column about discrepancies in the official story. Suddenly she was dead.

On November 8, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen, was found dead in her apartment shortly after returning from Dallas where she had interviewed Jack Ruby and had conducted her own investigation of the JFK murder during several trips to cover the Ruby trial.

She had revealed secret transcripts of Ruby's testimony in her column. Kilgallen had met with Ruby. She had learned of a meeting three weeks before the assassination at Ruby's "Carousel", the Dallas underworld's merry-go-round where the "Big D" mobsters wheeled around.

Present at the meeting were Ruby, Officer J.D. Tippit, Bernard Weismann and, she would later learn, a fourth party.

Lee Israel, author of "Kilgallen", reports that that Ruby, himself a TV fan of Dorothy Kilgallen, had taken a liking to her during the trial. According to Israel, he respected her more than any other reporter. She had gained his confidence and had several conversations with him in the courtroom. She was given a five minute session alone with Ruby. Some writers have stretched this to a half-hour, others deny it.

Regardless, it is a fact that when Dorothy returned to New York, she told friends that she had discovered that Ruby and the slain Officer J.D. Tippit had been friends. They had been seen together in Ruby's Carousel Club at a meeting 2 weeks before the assassination in the company of Bernard Weissman, who had placed the "JFK-Wanted for Treason" newspaper ad in Dallas newspapers on November 22nd, 1963. Studying the Warren Commission Report, Killgallen deduced that the meeting had also been reported to Chief Justice Warren AND that the identity of "the fourth man",which she had been unable to ascertain, had been reported to Warren as "a rich Texas oil man", as Earl Warren described him in the official transcript.

She told Israel that she had discovered something that was going to break the whole JFK assassination mystery wide open. She told the same story to her next door neighbor, her hairdresser, her agent, her publisher, and the producer and host of "Nightlife".

Kilgallen had told Israel about a very mysterious and sinister player in the JFK assassination to whom she gave the code name "ferret man". From the description of the individual, it is clear that "ferret man" was none other than David Ferrie, another known associate of Jack Ruby involved in gun running, the Marcello mob and other anti-Castro operations from Florida to Texas. At one time, Ruby and Ferrie were co-owners of an airplane.

Nightlife's producer, Nick Vanoff, pleaded with her not to broach the subject on the air. She had arrived at the studio with a folder full of pertinent and explosive notes documents. She kept the folder closed throughout the interview. Vanoff, asked her agent, Bob Bach, to send her "a dozen long-stemmed roses."

On Sunday November 8, Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead, sitting fully dressed, upright in bed, early in the morning. The New York City Police investigated and the coroner found that Dorothy Kilgallen had died from ingestion of a lethal combination of alchohol and barbituates. All her notes and the article on which she had been working to "blow the JFK assassination wide open" also disappeared.

I think this thread clearly explains my visceral dislike of the circus (much like Ron's post) that Jim Garrison created. Serious investigators like Dorothy Kilgallen did not wait for the Warren Commission report, to question the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Evidence which strongly suggests that Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover are ultimately responsible for the [cover up] murders of Lee Harvey Oswald and Dorothy Kilgallen, raises the strong possibility that an "investigator" like Jim Garrison was not murdered because he was loyal to his former boss, J. Edgar Hoover, and that made Garrison a conniving instrument of the cover up. Incidently, the murder of Dorothy Kilgallen probably foreshadowed the murder of David Ferrie, and unlike Dorothy Kilgallen, who was murdered after interviewing Jack Ruby, Garrison survived the opportunity to repeatedly interview David Ferrie, [beginning in 1963] and I think that the reason for that is now rather obvious.

One of the early victims of the JFK conspiracy of silence, better yet "silencing" in the aftermath of JFK'S murder, was the noted reporter, columnist and television celebrity, Dorothy Kilgallen. I had watched her for years on "What's My Line?", not realizing that she had any involvement with the JFK story. Years later, I learned that she had broken the convention of silence in the press and written openly in her column about discrepancies in the official story. Suddenly she was dead.

On November 8, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen, was found dead in her apartment shortly after returning from Dallas where she had interviewed Jack Ruby and had conducted her own investigation of the JFK murder during several trips to cover the Ruby trial.

She had revealed secret transcripts of Ruby's testimony in her column. Kilgallen had met with Ruby. She had learned of a meeting three weeks before the assassination at Ruby's "Carousel", the Dallas underworld's merry-go-round where the "Big D" mobsters wheeled around.

Present at the meeting were Ruby, Officer J.D. Tippit, Bernard Weismann and, she would later learn, a fourth party.

Lee Israel, author of "Kilgallen", reports that that Ruby, himself a TV fan of Dorothy Kilgallen, had taken a liking to her during the trial. According to Israel, he respected her more than any other reporter. She had gained his confidence and had several conversations with him in the courtroom. She was given a five minute session alone with Ruby. Some writers have stretched this to a half-hour, others deny it.

Regardless, it is a fact that when Dorothy returned to New York, she told friends that she had discovered that Ruby and the slain Officer J.D. Tippit had been friends. They had been seen together in Ruby's Carousel Club at a meeting 2 weeks before the assassination in the company of Bernard Weissman, who had placed the "JFK-Wanted for Treason" newspaper ad in Dallas newspapers on November 22nd, 1963. Studying the Warren Commission Report, Killgallen deduced that the meeting had also been reported to Chief Justice Warren AND that the identity of "the fourth man",which she had been unable to ascertain, had been reported to Warren as "a rich Texas oil man", as Earl Warren described him in the official transcript.

She told Israel that she had discovered something that was going to break the whole JFK assassination mystery wide open. She told the same story to her next door neighbor, her hairdresser, her agent, her publisher, and the producer and host of "Nightlife".

Kilgallen had told Israel about a very mysterious and sinister player in the JFK assassination to whom she gave the code name "ferret man". From the description of the individual, it is clear that "ferret man" was none other than David Ferrie, another known associate of Jack Ruby involved in gun running, the Marcello mob and other anti-Castro operations from Florida to Texas. At one time, Ruby and Ferrie were co-owners of an airplane.

Nightlife's producer, Nick Vanoff, pleaded with her not to broach the subject on the air. She had arrived at the studio with a folder full of pertinent and explosive notes documents. She kept the folder closed throughout the interview. Vanoff, asked her agent, Bob Bach, to send her "a dozen long-stemmed roses."

On Sunday November 8, Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead, sitting fully dressed, upright in bed, early in the morning. The New York City Police investigated and the coroner found that Dorothy Kilgallen had died from ingestion of a lethal combination of alchohol and barbituates. All her notes and the article on which she had been working to "blow the JFK assassination wide open" also disappeared.

It may or may not come as a shock to you, but a great deal of the members of this Forum, are in agreement that Dorothy Kilgallen was "onto something significant," the trouble is, as your post reveals, is that the notes that she had that were "going to break the case wide open" not so mysteriously (in light of events of the last four decades) disappeared. One is therefore left to examine what little info can be gleaned from the public record of her statements (which you have done) and her background and especially her death on Nov. 8th, 1965.If there is a Rosetta Stone to the Dorothy Kilgallen case, in my opinion (since the notes were probably burnt or shredded immediately (just an educated guess, they sure as hell haven't appeared on the Internet or any books) it is the notes of the Ruby interview; I have seen one article mention the interview with Jack Ruby as being 8 mins. long courtesy of Judge Joe Brown, unfortunately it is said there were no other parties present. John Simkin has written a very well researched piece on the Forum concerning Dorothy Kilgallen and the JFK Assassination Seehttp://educationforu...?showtopic=1615

However, I will be updating it as a result of what I heard from Lamar Waldron. It is now clear why Robert and Edward Kennedy refused to act after hearing Grant Stockdale's story. In fact, they signed Stockdale's death warrant.

Dorothy Kilgallen's death now also makes much more sense. She probably knew about JFK's dual Cuban policy via Florence Pritchett (the coup plot via Earl Smith and the secret negotiations via JFK).

"Why should the Kennedy brothers do this? Why, did they not want the case investigated? My own view is that Robert Kennedy was himself implicated in the killing of JFK. "

I really do not think that is true. I think that there was a great deal of confusion about who was involved, the Kennedy brothers were just as clueless as most people were, regarding what happened, and Robert Kennedy in particular, felt guilty because he didn't know whether his vendetta with organized crime had contributed to the matter, and he instinctively knew that he needed the power of the Presidency, to get to the bottom of what happened.

I think that Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover are directly responsible for the murders of people like Dorothy Kilgallen and Florence Smith, and in the final analysis, the assassination of Robert Kennedy would not have been necessary, if he had been involved in the murder of his own brother, because if he was, Hoover would have considered him an ally.

[quote name='Lynne Foster' date='Nov 22 2005, 02:41 PM' post='46073']"Why should the Kennedy brothers do this? Why, did they not want the case investigated? My own view is that Robert Kennedy was himself implicated in the killing of JFK. "

I really do not think that is true. I think that there was a great deal of confusion about who was involved, the Kennedy brothers were just as clueless as most people were, regarding what happened, and Robert Kennedy in particular, felt guilty because he didn't know whether his vendetta with organized crime had contributed to the matter, and he instinctively knew that he needed the power of the Presidency, to get to the bottom of what happened.

I think that Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover are directly responsible for the murders of people like Dorothy Kilgallen and Florence Smith, and in the final analysis, the assassination of Robert Kennedy would not have been necessary, if he had been involved in the murder of his own brother, because if he was, Hoover would have considered him an ally.[/quote]

Wonder of wonders, I am in agreement with this view, with one caveat. It went higher than Lyndon and Hoover. CIA and other more secret intelligence operations.

Bobby was killed by the same forces that killed JFK. He was not involved in his brother's murder, directly or indirectly, imho.